The house where the Presleys spent the first days of their marriage is up for
sale, but there’s more to the place than novelty value

A couple who marry on May 1 and have their first child exactly nine months later, on February 1, can expect a certain amount of teasing about their honeymoon.

When that couple are Elvis and Priscilla Presley, and the house where they spent their 1967 honeymoon comes on the market, interest in the property is guaranteed to skyrocket.

“No star name attracts a bigger property premium than Elvis Presley,” says Mike Eisenberg, a Californian agent who specialises in selling properties with celebrity connections. “There is always a scramble when an Elvis house comes on the market.”

In this case, the house in question, 1350 Ladera Circle, Palm Springs, is a remarkable property in its own right: modernist architecture at its exuberant best. The singer rented the property for around a year starting in 1966, and paid $21,000 (£12,500). It is now on the market for $9.5million (£5.68million), which is as much a reflection of its architectural qualities as its connections with the King.

In 1962, the property featured in Look magazine as The House of Tomorrow. Half a century on, it still feels like a cool place to live, a charming rebuttal to conventional house design.

Built by the prominent Palm Springs developer Robert Alexander, the home was designed in four perfect circles, on three levels, and incorporates a mixture of glass and peanut brittle stonework.

It is a standout property in a standout location, one of the best addresses in California. “Palm Springs is a great niche area to invest right now,” explains Josh Altman of The Altman Brothers. (Not a rock band, despite the name, but the agents selling the property.) “The Elvis honeymoon house is a particularly good investment because of the classic midcentury architecture that the area is known for.

“And don’t forget all the priceless history that the home offers. If only the walls could talk of all the 'tender loving…’"

The master bedroom suite where Elvis and Priscilla spent their honeymoon offers panoramic views of the Santa Rosa mountains. There are intriguing art deco furnishings throughout, while the grounds include a swimming pool, a tennis court and an orchard. As a place of retreat from prying eyes, it could hardly be better.

Alas, the Presleys did not stay long enough to get the best out of the home. Their wedding was a whirlwind affair. The ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas lasted just eight minutes. After the bride and groom had flown to Palm Springs by private jet, they only stayed there three days, before flying back to Memphis, where Elvis had his main home, Graceland.

But such is the potency of the Elvis brand that the honeymoon house has achieved celebrated status among the singer’s army of fans. It has already featured in two television movies, Elvis & Me (1998) and Elvis by the Presleys (2005), and is so gloriously over the top that it fits perfectly into the Elvis narrative. You wouldn’t expect the King to have his honeymoon in a bog-standard suite at the Los Angeles Hilton, would you?

The present owner of 1350 Ladera Circle is a Boston investor, M L Lewis, who does not live in the property but has flooded the entire house with Elvis artwork and memorabilia, including cardboard cut-outs of the great man.

It is run as a tourist attraction (elvishoneymoon.com), offering guided tours and themed Fifties weekends where Elvis lookalikes strut their stuff alongside Frank Sinatra lookalikes.

Until recently, you could also visit the other property that Elvis owned in Palm Springs – the Chino Canyon home he bought in the Seventies, when his marriage to Priscilla was fizzling out.

There were hopes at one stage that the rather run-down property could be renovated and turned into “Graceland West”, a visitor attraction to match Graceland itself. But the house apparently got mired in legal disputes and has come on the market for $3.95million (£2.35million).

All shook up: There are intriguing art deco furnishings throughout, while the grounds include a swimming pool and a tennis court

The Elvis honeymoon hideaway is a more striking property altogether. Like Graceland, which manages to be simultaneously outrageous – gold taps, pink Cadillacs – and rather poignant. It offers an eloquent metaphor for the singer’s meteoric rise to fame.

Just 14 years separate 1967, the year of his wedding, from the famous day in August 1953 when he walked into Sun Studio in Memphis. A complete unknown, he made the demo tape that would change musical history.

At the start of the Second World War, he was still living in the house where he was born – a two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, that would not cover a tennis court.

No 20th-century rock star better embodied the precarious nature of celebrity, soaring above his contemporaries only to plummet to disaster. But the Elvis magic burns as brightly as ever – and nowhere more than in this little oasis of tranquillity on the edge of the California desert.